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레일스는 이제 어떻게 되나?

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핵심 요약

Ruby on Rails 창시자 DHH가 Rails World 2026 기조연설에서 자신은 더 이상 직업 프로그래머가 아니라 '메이커'라고 선언하고, LLM 코드 생성에 전적으로 베팅한다고 밝혔다. 대표적 Rails 앱이던 Hey의 다음 버전은 네이티브 앱과 Rust 서버로 Rails를 벗어나 개발된다는 발표는 Rails 커뮤니티에 큰 충격을 주고 있다.

번역된 본문

Ruby/Rails

레일스는 이제 어떻게 되나? Jared Norman 저 | 2026년 9월 24일 게시

David Heinemeier Hansson은 좋든 싫든 여전히 Ruby on Rails의 책임자다. 나는 그에게서 관심을 거두고 싶지만, 내가 Rails로 애플리케이션을 만들기 때문에 그의 행보는 나와 내 고객에게 영향을 미친다.

어제 그는 Rails World 2026에서 개막 기조연설을 통해 Rails의 미래에 대한 비전을 제시했다. 적어도 발표가 그래야 했다. 하지만 그의 기조연설은 Rails와는 거의 관련이 없었다. 그가 실제로 무엇을 말했고, 그것이 Rails에 어떤 의미인지 살펴보자.

핵심 요약

나는 직업 프로그래머에서 은퇴했다. 그렇다, 그가 실제로 그렇게 말했다. 하지만 그것이 소프트웨어 개발에서 손을 떼겠다는 뜻은 아니다. 그는 이제 자신을 '메이커(maker)'라고 부른다.

그는 이제 영어가 최고의 프로그래밍 언어라고 주장한다(LLM 때문에). 심지어 LLM이 생성한 코드를 읽을 필요조차 없다고 말한다. 대부분의 회사에서 일하는 대부분의 프로그래머에게 손으로 코드를 작성하는 것은 더 이상 경제적으로 생산적인 활동이 아니라는 것이다.

그는 LLM 코드 생성에 전력을 다하고 있어서, 네이티브 애플리케이션과 Rust 프로그래밍 언어에 대한 입장도 바꿨다. 그의 관점에서 Hey 같은 제품은 애초에 웹 앱이 될 운명이 아니었다.

그는 수년간 Rails 스택이 작은 팀도 야심찬 제품을 만들 수 있게 해준다고 주장해왔다. 그런데 지금 37signals가 Hey의 다음 버전을 만들면서 다른 스택을 선택하고 있다. 그의 설명에 따르면 병목이 사라졌기 때문에, 지원하는 모든 플랫폼의 네이티브 앱을 LLM으로 만들고 있다. 서버 측에서는 Rust를 쓴다. DHH는 Rust라는 언어 자체는 끔찍하고 인간이 견뎌야 할 언어가 아니지만 LLM에게는 훌륭하다고 말한다. 어차피 코드를 읽지 않으니, 이제 그 언어의 성능과 안정성을 높이 평가할 수 있게 된 것이다.

그는 올해 8월 한 달에만 15만 줄의 코드를 작성했다고 주장한다. LLM 이전 시대에는 연평균 약 3만 줄이었다. (그 상당수가 '장황한' Rust 코드라고 인정했다.) 지난 20년간 그의 작업의 절반을 차지하던 Ruby는 올해 작성량의 3%에 불과하다.

새 전략의 뿌리는, 인간이 코드를 읽는 것은 'Sentry에서 버그를 발견하는 것'처럼 예외적 상황이어야지 기본이 되어서는 안 된다는 생각이다. 지금은 그렇다. 그리고 연말까지는 사실상 모든 분야, 모든 프로그래머, 모든 회사에 적용될 것이다. 그러니 빨리 익숙해지는 게 좋다고 그는 말한다.

그는 또 모든 서비스가 CLI를 제공해서 자신이(정확히는 '자신의 에이전트들이') UI를 거치지 않고 상호작용할 수 있기를 원한다. 이제 우리는 무엇이든 원할 수 있고, 무엇이든 얻을 수 있다.

발표의 후반부는 LLM이 모든 사람이 원하는 것을 만들 수 있게 한다는 그의 비전에 초점이 맞춰져 있었다. 그는 Omarchy 작업에 대해 이야기하고, AI 회의론과 종말론을 거부하라고 청중에게 촉구하며 마무리했다. "패배주의는 진짜 패배자나 삼켜라. 패배자가 되지 마라."

레일스 모양의 구멍

DHH는 세계 최고의 Rails 컨퍼런스 개막 기조연설 무대에서, Rails의 대표 앱이 Rails를 떠난다는 발표를 했다. Rails에 관한 내용이라곤 여전히 (Basecamp 같은) 웹 애플리케이션에는 훌륭한 선택이고 AI로 개발하기에 좋다는 정도였다.

우리는 20년 동안 Rails를 '작은 팀, 야심찬 제품'을 위한 프레임워크라는 말을 들어왔다. 나는 Rails 덕분에 적은 자원으로 많은 성과를 낸 팀을 수없이 봐왔다. 여러분도 마찬가지일 것이다. Hey는 과거에도, 지금도 웹 앱이었다. 작은 팀이 생산성을 내려면 웹 앱을 만드는 수밖에 없었기 때문이다. 그 옛날, 그러니까 단 5분 전만 해도 말이다…

그의 Rails에 대한 비전은 좁아졌다. Rails는 취향이 아니라 차선책이었다. 이제 Rails는 '부득이한 웹 앱'을 위한 선택 플랫폼이 됐다. '설정보다 관습(convention over configuration)'은 '토큰 효율(token efficiency)'로 재해석됐다. Evil Martians의 에이전트 평가는 그저 안심시키는 수단일 뿐이다. AI는 Rails를 잘 다루니 걱정하지 않아도 된다는 식이다.

원문 보기
원문 보기 (영어)
Ruby/Rails What About Rails? By Jared Norman published September 24th, 2026 David Heinemeier Hansson is, for better or worse, still in charge of Ruby on Rails. I’d love to stop paying attention to him, but I build applications with Rails, so his actions affect me and my clients. Yesterday, he gave the opening keynote at Rails World 2026, where he laid out his vision for the future of Rails. Or that’s what his talk should have done. His keynote had very little to do with Rails. Here’s what he did talk about, and what it means for Rails. The Gist of It I have retired from being a professional programmer. Yes, he said that. No, that doesn’t mean he’s stepping away from software development. He now styles himself a “maker.” He now claims that English is the best programming language (because LLMs) and that we don’t even necessarily need to read the code the LLMs produce. Writing code by hand is no longer an economically productive enterprise for the vast majority of programmers working at the vast majority of companies. He’s all-in on LLM code generation, so he’s changed his stance on both native applications and the Rust programming language. In his eyes, products like Hey were never really meant to be web apps. He’s argued for years that the Rails stack allows small teams to build ambitious products. Now, as 37signals are building the next version of Hey, they are going with a different stack. In his telling, the bottleneck is gone, so they’re using LLMs to build native applications for every platform they support. On the server side, they are going with Rust. DHH maintains that the language is hideous and that humans shouldn’t be subjected to it, but that it’s great for LLMs. Since he’s not reading the code anyway, he can now appreciate the performance and stability of the language. He claims to have written 150k lines of code in August of this year, having previously averaged about 30k lines per year in the pre-LLM era. (He admits much of it is “verbose” Rust.) While Ruby made up about half his work over the last two decades, it sits at only 3% of what he wrote this year. The new strategy is rooted in the idea that humans reading code should be the exception, rather than the norm, “like seeing a bug in Sentry.” That’s today. By the end of the year, it will be virtually all domains, virtually all programmers, virtually all companies. So we best get used to it. He also wants to see every service offer a CLI so that he (read: “his agents”) can interact with it without using the UI. We can now want everything. We can now get everything. The tail end of his talk focused on his vision of LLMs enabling everyone to create whatever their hearts desire. He spoke about his work on Omarchy and finished by urging the audience to reject AI skepticism and doomerism: The black pill is for fucking losers. Don’t be a loser. A Rails-shaped Hole DHH used the opening keynote of the world’s premier Rails conference to announce that a flagship Rails app was leaving Rails. The Rails content amounted to it still being a great fit for web applications (like Basecamp) and being great for building with AI. For twenty years we’ve been sold Rails as the framework for “small teams, ambitious products”. I’ve been on a ton of teams that were able to do a lot with a little because of Rails. You probably have too. Hey was and is a web app because making web apps for small teams was how you could be productive. In the old times, that is, 5 minutes ago… His vision for Rails has narrowed. Rails wasn’t a preference. It was a workaround. It’s now the platform of choice for “web apps of necessity”. Convention over configuration has been reframed as “token efficiency”. Evil Martians’ agent evals are simply a reassurance; AI is good at Rails, so you don’t need to leave. There’s a more charitable framing. Rails is a mature, stable framework. Stability is good for agentic development. But he told us only 3% of his work this year was Ruby. Nothing in this talk attempts to distinguish a mature platform from one whose creator is no longer paying attention. The CLI demands were baffling. 37signals differentiates their products with opinionated UI/UX, not novel features. They are rewriting Hey as six native apps because the web fidelity isn’t good enough. So UI matters enough to justify complete rewrites, but also everyone just wants CLIs? If every product is used by an agent driving a CLI, what’s going to differentiate Basecamp or Fizzy from the cheapest alternative? I think this strategy needs a Rework. I’m left wondering what the vision for Rails really is now, and who’s going to drive it. While Mosscap forked on political grounds, part of their core argument is that Rails is done. It’s stable and needs only maintenance. Hanami has a roadmap and a vision for the future of building web applications with Ruby. While much of the day-to-day work on Rails comes from Shopify and elsewhere, DHH historically drove the vision. Now, is he arguing himself out of a business, or has he already left and not told the room? The creator of Rails is taking one of his flagship products off the stack. His Ruby output has dropped to 3%. He believes hand-written code will be history for virtually everyone by December. In the face of this, he offers flattery. Now maybe that’s a little scary. Like maybe we’re gonna get a little competition. Who’s afraid of a little competition? Aren’t you better? Don’t you know more? Of course you do. You’re a fucking Rails programmer. You’re the best of the best. This is goddamn Top Gun I’m looking at here. Embrace that. With gusto. This is reassurance instead of a plan. I bet it worked in the room too; confidence always does. But it’s totally hollow. You could say the same thing to a room of Django or Laravel or fucking Spring Boot developers word for word . The one moment he talked directly to Rails developers, he chose to say nothing about Rails. The Hallucinated Elephant in the Room On to the AI claims. For context, DHH runs a company that makes simple, user-friendly products. They’re so simple that even before the advent of LLMs they would periodically fully rewrite their apps to create new versions. 37signals succeeds on product and marketing, not on solving hard technical problems. I’m not hating; lots of people love their apps. I’m just saying that their new Kanban app’s success is going to be driven by product decisions and marketing. Kanban board is not one of the hard problems of computer science. So does his approach (never looking at the output, evaluating the result from the outside) work? These tools have come a long way. They still make all kinds of mistakes, but as long as there’s a human in the loop to verify the results and reprompt, it works fine, at least for small apps and easy problems. It’s hard to take the numbers in this talk seriously, because David keeps undermining them. Throughout he presents topics as settled, despite failing to support them coherently. He admits that lines of code is a poor measure and grants that we can’t compare across languages fairly, then compares 150,000 lines of LLM output in August to his 30k/year average, then immediately concedes that he tolerates Rust code from LLMs that he “would never tolerate from [his] Ruby code”. Lines of hand-written, concise Ruby and LLM-generated Rust slop are not comparable. He seems to know this, but compares them anyway. In the past 20 months, I have written half as much code as I did in the previous 21 years. Apples to oranges again, and he’s struggling with the definition of “to write”. He didn’t even read the R